Words of Wisdom by MrWes

Sightseeing in Portland, Oregon

Posted on July 24, 2009 by Wes Johnson

Today, we visited Portland, Oregon.

Food

Before going to the Rose Garden, we visited the Elephants Delicatessen. A favorite eating establishment of my Aunt and many others who live near the Portland area. This delicatessen had quite a variety of things to eat. There were helpful people behind each counter. There was quite a selection of food to satisfy just about every taste you can imagine. We ordered sandwiches and their famous Wild Mushroom soup. Everything was great. The next time we visit Portland, we’ll have to eat at the Elephants Delicatessen.

Oregon Holocaust Memorial, Portland Oregon

Memorial

After our meal, we headed toward the International Rose Test Garden. On the way to the Rose Garden, in the same park, we saw a sign pointing to the Oregon Holocaust Memorial. We decided to go and visit the memorial. The Holocaust Memorial was donated by local Oregonians. The memorial is set in a very quiet part of the park, it gives the visitor a place to reflect on what an effect the holocaust has had on the entire world. The memorial had a very powerful statement. We spent quite a while reading the walls of the memorial and viewing the architecture. Everyone should take the time and visit it.

Portland Oregon Rose Garden

Flowers

After visiting the memorial, we went on to visit the International Rose Test Garden. This was a real treat. The roses were beautiful. We must have spent hours viewing and smelling the variety of roses. I could see that this garden was a favorite of many photographers. I was informed that the garden is even more spectacular during the Portland Rose Festival which happens between May and June. When I get back home, I plan to post some pictures of the pictures we took.

Recently, I’ve been thinking alot about the value of having a PC Laptop connect card. This would sure make it easier for doing remote blogging. Maybe I’ll write about this in a future blog.

Till next time, I’m enjoying the nice weather up here

Posted in Blog | Tagged Travel | Leave a comment

Remote Blogging is challenging

Posted on July 23, 2009 by Wes Johnson

This is going to be an interesting week. My wife and I are traveling to Oregon to visit relatives. I wil be blogging from remote locations in Medford and Oregon City. This will be the first time since I’ve started blogging that I’ll be posting outside of California. I’m not sure how the other bloggers do it. If you have any suggestions, please chime in. Up until now, I’ve been trying to update my blog on a daily basis. This schedule will be kind of difficult while I’m busy traveling. I can see where creating blogs ahead of time and pre-scheduling them for publication would be very helpful here. My question is how many posts are bloggers working on at any one time. This week, I’ll be posting information about our travels. If possible, I’ll include some images as well. One of the sites we plan to visit on our return trip is the Sundial Bridge in Redding, CA

Till next time, have a great week

Posted in Blog | Tagged Blogging, Traveling | Leave a comment

Dear Jane visited PRN today

Posted on July 21, 2009 by Wes Johnson

Professional Resource Network of San Joaquin was visited by the owners of Dear Jane…A Career Advisement Company today. Rebecca Martin and Julie Youngblood both gave an outstanding presentation on understanding recruiters. In the past, I’ve worked for recruiter Robert Half Technology. I had a good experience with them, but I never really knew how the whole recruiting process worked. Rebecca and Julie helped to clarify that for me.

My favorite part was when they talked about the hidden job market. I never really thought about the power of the hidden job market. They also talked about how to make yourself known in this hidden market. I also found it interesting how they talked about using networking as a tool.

Till next time, I’m going to try using some of their tips

Posted in Blog | Tagged Success | Leave a comment

Capture your ideas as soon as they happen

Posted on July 19, 2009 by Wes Johnson

I had this bright idea

Have you ever been some place, and didn’t have a pencil and paper to write your thoughts down? If you didn’t write it down, that great idea you just had might vanish. You might have seen some product, book or website that was a solution to a question you’ve had or a problem you’ve been trying to solve. Have you ever considered that the solution to your note problem is sitting inside your pocket or purse? Most Cell phones these days have a notepad app built-in. Until recently I wasn’t utilizing this technology to its full potential.

Notepad on speed-dial

Most cell phones will allow you to associate a favorite application with a soft button. One of those buttons that allows you to quickly navigate through the phones menu system to get where you want to be. I have added a shortcut to notepad as my application of choice.

Every time a have a great idea or inspiration, I take the time to create a note related to my thoughts. This includes any ideas that might pop-up in the middle of my slumber. I just take a second hit the notepad button, and start typing away.

When I type the note in, I use the following format: {category}:title{notes}

Typical notes I might record:

blog: write about notepad on your phone – talk about shortcut to capture my thoughts
tivo: add NUMB3RS season pass
books: First Things First – Covery, Merrill, Merrill
list: hardware – hardware list
list: groceries – grocery list

Addressing my ideas:

watching TiVo – review Tivo items
Grocery store – review grocery list
hardware store – review hardware needs
on my computer – review blog notes and start Posts related to those thoughts

This has been very freeing for me, I can clear my head of current ideas and not be worried about losing my thoughts.

Till next time, try it for awhile & see if it works for you. Please add your comments to this blog.

Posted in Blog | Tagged Productivity, Success, Technology | Leave a comment

Missing Font issue resolved

Posted on July 18, 2009 by Wes Johnson

The details are better at 600 dpi

Yesterday in my post, Trouble with Fonts, I shared about all the problems I was experienced with the embroidery setup. Today I brought in the desired logo image as a GIF image. Unfortunately, the software didn’t like GIF images. So, what kind did it like? JPG format was the preferred format. So,I brought in the right file format. When the image was imported into the program it appeared to shrink from a very large size in the image file to 1/4 inch high. The program had a difficult time trying to identify some of the characters. It lost some detail. So, what was going on? After I thought about it for a while, it turns out that the default for my paint program was 92 dpi. That was fine for websites, but not to good for interpretation by Embroidery software. Once, I figured out what was going on, I changed the scale to 600 dpi and selected the largest font that was available 288 pt. After these adjustments, I created my logo again. This time, the Embrodery software had not trouble identifying the characters. In fact it was pretty flawless. We generated a test with the new image and everything worked beautifully.

MrWes logo on blue shirt

Once we worked out all the kinks the finished product was exactly what I was looking for. Now I know that a 600 dpi jpeg image is exactly what an Embroidery machine is looking for. I also learned that while you’re working out the details of an image, you might want to have your laptop handy to make any last minute details.

MrWes logo on green shirt

Great Job

Within hours of submitting my design, I was able to wear the final product. I plan to wear these shirts all the time. In fact, I’m already planning on having a few more made. It turns out embroidery is pretty affordable. Thanks you Double Stitch for helping me get the end result I was looking for.

The Results

I started wearing my shirt right after I received it from the shop. Without even thinking about the message I was sending out to the public. To my surprise, a cashier at Home Depot started up a conversation about social networking and Twitter. That was really cool. I’m already getting the results, I was hoping for.

Till next time, Don’t forget to Follow Me @MrWes

Posted in Blog, Branding | Tagged Branding, Marketing | Leave a comment